


Plateau

by sturms_sun_shattered



Series: Illuminate Your Path [4]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, DLC Spoilers, Encouragement, Gen, moderate canon compliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturms_sun_shattered/pseuds/sturms_sun_shattered
Summary: Link’s trial on the Great Plateau is draining, but at least he knows at the end he won’t be alone.
Relationships: Kass & Link (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Illuminate Your Path [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1603183
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Plateau

**Author's Note:**

> For Akkala, who asked for more Link.

The weapon on his back seemed to draw at his very life force. Link could feel the throb of its power thrumming along with his heartbeat. All he needed to do was kill some monsters. That was not so difficult; he killed monsters all of the time. The difficult part was fighting through the ringing in his ears and the leaden numbness that seemed to have taken over his limbs.

Link climbed the broken masonry to get a clear shot of the bokoblins which paced through the woods. He watched as they grunted at each other in acknowledgement and scratched themselves rudely. He notched an arrow, waiting patiently for the patrolling bokoblin to return, though his muscles screamed for him to release. Link took a deep breath—he knew how to do this, how to crouch down and wait patiently—but he rather preferred to run into the chaos, to take his lumps and deal double in return. The weapon on his back did not allow for such recklessness.

He picked off one bokoblin with a head-shot. The slowness of his progress was a test, he told himself, but his usual focus was so scattered by the hunger gnawing at his insides and the fatigue clouding his mind that he didn’t know how he would complete this task. He took out the look outs on at a time and felled the colony of keese that swirled overhead with a well-placed bomb arrow. 

As his feet touched ground near the giant hollowed log, he reacted without thought to the chuchus that congealed from the earth. He struck them both with the one-hit obliterator in a motion born of instinct. The cost of its efficacy was its sudden and total uselessness...not to mention the ache in his arm from welding the ponderous weapon.

Link watched as a shrine rose from the ground—yet another punishment for his success—and he resigned himself to endure the trial.

The day and night seemed hardly any different from one another. The Great Plateau was covered by roiling clouds that blotted out the sun and made it hard to calculate the passage of time. By the time Link had completed the first shrine he felt that he could hardly stand.

He tried eating, but the mushroom skewer sat heavily in his stomach and he felt no better. It was night—according to the Sheikah Slate anyway—and he set out toward the point near the Eastern Abbey. The faster he did this, the sooner it would be over, he reminded himself as he stumbled listlessly through the piles of broken stone from the ruins.

Link started as a barrel of explosives rolled across the uneven stones ahead of him. He wasn’t sure where it had come from, but he ducked behind a pile of stone in and drew the obliterator with a quivering hand. Seeing to enemies inbound, he returned the weapon to his back, imploring his hand to cease its trembling.

It wasn’t fear that had hold of him, but that wretched thing which pulsed in his ears and sapped his strength. Link grit his teeth and used his golden bow and some well placed bomb arrows to clear the area of lizalfos.

He was growing reckless in his fatigue, unable to block out the sound of blood pounding through his ears. He used his last ancient arrow to eliminate the Guardian and harassed the lizalfos below with bombs until the last one realized he was only hiding behind the broken of piers above. He struck out with the obliterator at this last foe and fell backwards with the counter-force of the strike.

Link grit his teeth and held his wrist as he watched another shrine push its way up from the dirt below sending little tremors through the ground. Each time he used the obliterator it felt as though it took a little piece of him with it, and his arm was beginning to ache. He pushed himself up from the ground with a deep breath and made for Rohta Chigah’s shrine.

When Link finally emerged from the shrine he could not tell whether hours or days had passed. He let himself sink to his knees at the mouth of the shrine. His head was pounding from the relentless rhythm of the spikes’ continual rising and falling grid. He could still feel the sweat on his palms from the last battery of spikes that threatened to impale him as he ran along the gauntlet that overlooked the abyss nothingness below.

Steadying his breathing, he realized that through the echoes of the grating sounds that still hung about his mind, he could hear something familiar. He pushed himself to his feet and realized that the accordion music which drifted across the plateau was not some wistful hallucination.

As Link stumbled toward him, Kass heard his approach and ceased his playing. He turned, looking a little startled.

“I hadn’t thought I would find anyone up here. It seems our paths cross once again,” said Kass.

He stepped toward Link, his expression concerned.

“If you’ll pardon my saying, you don’t look entirely well.”

Kass reached out a cautious wing just under Link’s arm. Link grabbed it in sudden desperation; everything ached and he was so very exhausted.

“Perhaps you should rest,” suggested Kass, “you look as though a stiff wind might set you adrift.”

Link shook his head, hating the way his hand still quivered as it gripped Kass’s feathers.

“I have a song if you wish to sit a while and listen,” Kass suggested, an obvious ploy to get Link to stop for a moment.

Link wanted very much to sit and rest with Kass, but feared that any delay to this trial might mean he would be unable to complete it. No, he decided, it was better to push on; this would soon be over.

“I’ll return,” he rasped.

“I will await you here,” Kass promised, the concern never leaving his eyes.

Link forged ahead. Knowing that the princess awaited him in the castle had pushed him beyond what he had thought he was capable of in the past. It was a constant guilt that hung over him, waking him at first light and running him well into the dark. This time, it was the knowledge that he was not alone in this desolate place as he so often felt.

With a renewed determination, Link grit his teeth and picked off the monsters which congregated at the bottom of the stone face behind the Temple of Time. Frustrated, he set the grass aflame with a series of bomb arrows and watched the monsters perish below. He pushed through the shrine—not nearly so harrowing as the last—and set out once more.

The cold kept him alert as he targeted the monsters below. He could not understand how they didn’t see him above and lumbered about in confusion, only to see their fellows fall one by one. Finally, Link watched the last of the shrines break through the crust of snow. This time, it felt like a reward.

He returned to Kass with that cursed weapon finally out of his possession. Somehow, as the fog had cleared from his mind, so, too, had the clouds which hung above the Great Plateau. The pains which had hampered him had disappeared, though he was still starving.

“I’m glad to see you have returned,” said Kass, “please, come share in my meal.”

Link didn’t need to be asked twice and he sat down near Kass’s fire and accepted the fish skewer offered to him.

“The weather has cleared, and it seems that your countenance has brightened along with it. I won’t press you on your mission, but I am relieved that you have returned unscathed.”

Link gave the bard a half-smile. He had to admit, he was relieved that Kass was not collecting his remains from the bottom of a snowy mountain.

“Might I share a song with you?” Kass asked.

Link nodded and leaned back against the rocks behind him as Kass began to play. The sun was setting over the world, and though he still had so much left to do, Link decided that he had earned a moment of rest.


End file.
